American Association for the Advancement of Science

Loading video…VIDEO: This movie shows 20 different people drawing a novel character (left) and the algorithm predicting how those images were drawn (right). This material relates to a paper that appeared in… view more Researchers have created a computer model that captures humans’ unique ability to learn new concepts from a single example. Though the model is only capable of learning handwritten characters from alphabets, the approach underlying it could be broadened to have applications for other symbol-based systems, like gestures, dance moves, and the words of spoken and signed languages. Recent years have seen steady advances in machine learning, yet people are still far better than machines at learning new concepts, often needing just an example or two compared to the tens or hundreds machines typically require. What’s more, after…